Sexual abuse is a spreading and longstanding problem at madrassas of Pakistan. Kausar Parveen cries out when she spokes about her boy. She struggles to maintain tears when she remembers about the blood-soaked pants of her 9-year-old son, raped by a religious cleric.
The boy had studied for a year at a nearby Islamic school in the town of Kehrore Pakka. In the blistering heat of late April, in the grimy two-room Islamic madrassa, he awoke one night to find his teacher lying beside him. In a culture where clerics are powerful and sexual abuse is a taboo subject, it is seldom discussed or even acknowledged in public.
Police are often paid off not to pursue justice against clerics, victims’ families say. Pakistan’s legal system allows the victim’s family to “forgive” the offender and accept what is often referred to as “blood money.”
The AP found hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by clerics reported in the past decade, and officials suspect there are much more within a far-reaching system that teaches at least 2 million children in Pakistan. The investigation was based on police documents and dozens of interviews with victims, relatives, former and current ministers, aid groups and religious officials.
The case of Parveen’s son was one of at least three within a month in the towns of Kehrore Pakka and Rajanpur in Punjab province’s deep south, according to police reports. Another incident involved the drugging and gang rape of a 12-year-old boy asleep on his madrassa rooftop by former students. And the third was of a 10-year-old boy sodomized by the madrassa principal when he brought him his meal. The cleric threatened to kill the boy if he told.
Pakistan’s clerics close ranks when the madrassa system is too closely scrutinized, he says. Among the weapons they use to frighten their critics is a controversial blasphemy law that carries a death penalty in the case of a conviction.
Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Muhammed Yousaf dismisses the suggestion that sexual abuse is widespread, saying such talk is an attempt to malign the religion, seminaries, and clerics. He says he was not aware of even the cases reported in the newspapers, but that it could occur occasionally `because there are criminals everywhere.” Yousaf says the reform and control of madrassas is the job of the interior ministry.
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